Week in Review

Early man did not have a long life expectancy. Thanks to infectious disease and poor (or nonexistent) medical care people who got sick or injured often died. Unhygienic living spread communicable diseases which killed large numbers in the community. The lack of fuel to heat your home or cook your food exposed people to the elements and food-borne bacteria. Causing illnesses that went untreated and added to the death toll. And a high infant mortality rates brought down the average lifespan further.

There were a lot of old people in their 70s throughout history. But go back a couple of centuries so many children didn’t survive their childhood that the average lifespan was in the 30s. But thanks to the modern world of energy and medicine our life expectancies have never been higher. Even though coal is taking some years off the additional years it gave some (see Burning Heating Coal Cuts Lives by 5 Years in China, Study Finds by Daryl Loo posted 7/9/2013 on Bloomberg).

People in northern China may be dying five years sooner than expected because of diseases caused by air pollution, an unintended result of a decades-old policy providing free coal for heat, a study found.

Coal burning leading to heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and respiratory illnesses may cause the 500 million Chinese living north of the Huai River — a rough line dividing the country’s north and south — to lose an aggregate 2.5 billion years of life expectancy, according to the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today.

The government gave free heating coal for people living north of the Huai River over a period of central planning from 1950 to 1980, and such indoor systems remain common today, the study showed. Burning coal in boilers is linked to the release of particulate matter that can be extremely harmful to humans, raising health costs and suggesting a move away from using fossil fuels would be attractive, according to Michael Greenstone, one of four authors of the study.

If the government took away fuel to heat and cook with how would that impact their life expectancies?

Yes, it’s sad that breathing particulate matter can remove 5 years of your life. But how many more years did these people live because of coal? They had to stay warm somehow. And they needed to cook their food with something. If they didn’t have coal these people would have been collecting firewood year round and burning that inside of their homes. Releasing particulate matter into their homes anyway. Only with a rise in lost appendages from swinging an axe. More infected wounds from axe slips. And they’d have rodents living in their wood piles. Bringing disease into their homes. Carried by the fleas on these rodents.

Coal may be taking 5 years away these people. But they may be taking these years from a person who might not have survived his or her childhood if it weren’t for coal making their home a better place to live in. It’s time we stop seeing only the bad that coal does. And start recognizing the good that coal does. For when it comes to human existence the good of coal far outweighs the bad. For look where coal has taken us. To the highest life expectancies in our history. And it is still making our world a better and healthier place by creating electric power. The essential ingredient in making the best medical care possible. Thank you, coal. Some of us appreciate the good that you do.

Week in Review

When the actuaries first crunched the Social Security numbers do you know what they did? They built a system that would start paying benefits to people who on average were already dead. That is the retirement age was pretty close to the average life expectancy. Which meant few people would live long into retirement. So if you’re collecting taxes from everyone but only have to pay about half of them in retirement (as the other half would already be dead) it wasn’t that hard to keep Social Security solvent. But then something happened. We started living longer. Which the actuaries never thought would happen. Worse, people were having fewer babies. So as more people lived longer into retirement there were fewer people entering the workforce to pay the taxes to pay for their long retirement. Creating an aging population. Something else the actuaries never thought would happen.

Britain is “woefully under-prepared” to cope with an expected explosion of older people and ministers need to respond by raising the retirement age and tackle the costs by reviewing pensioner benefits, a House of Lords inquiry concluded.

A special committee of peers blamed successive governments for their failure to tackle policy issues generated by the ageing population, warned that the biggest threats are to already stretched health and social services, and proposed a raft of new policies to help people cope.

Led by Lord Filkin, the group did not put forward a specific timetable for increasing the state pension age – already set to rise from 60 for women and 65 for men, to 66 in 2020 and 68 by 2046 – but the body did cite recommendations made by Lord Turner, chairman of the pensions commission, who had said the threshold could rise to 70 by 2030…

The wide-ranging inquiry heard startling evidence about the scale of the demographic change coming. Between 2010 and 2030 there is expected to be a 50% increase in people aged 65 or older, and a doubling of people aged 85 or older.

The consequences are predicted to be a 50% increase in people with arthritis, coronary disease or strokes, and an 80% rise in people with dementia to nearly two million.

So the British are talking about raising retirement ages. And means-testing their benefits. One thing they don’t mention is their Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient. To help the dying to die with dignity. Though many call it a quasi death panel. To help unburden the NHS with a lot of costly patients. Helping them to stretch their limited resources to cover more people. Obamacare includes something similar. Some bureaucrat will make life and death decisions to determine whether medical care will have an acceptable cost-benefit ratio. If not, well, there will be something similar to Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient in Obamacare. For it will be the only way to cut costs with an aging population. Unless you force health care workers to work at bargain discount pay rates. Like they do in Cuba. And North Korea.

This will be the future of Obamacare. For it is the present of the NHS. And we both have aging populations.

Big Government is a Ponzi Scheme

When it comes to government funding, birthrates and death rates are key. Think of government as a great Ponzi scheme. Ponzi schemes work when more people pay into the scam than collect from the scam. Like in a pyramid scheme. Those collecting benefits are the few at the top. Those paying in are the many at the base.

An increasing birthrate means more taxpayers for each successive generation. This keeps the base of the pyramid growing. A steady or increasing death rate keeps the top of the pyramid smaller than the base. A declining death rate, on the other hand, will flip the pyramid upside down. Because the population at the top will grow larger than the population at the bottom.

Big Government tries to keep as many people as possible dependent on government. Lots of different programs attach lots of different people to the welfare state. But when it comes to big numbers, old people can’t be beat. The lion’s share of government assistance goes to them via Social Security and Medicare. And they are the most politically active. That means they vote. And when they vote, they vote to keep their benefits.

Of course, this is a dual-edged sword. Yes, old people can provide a loyal voting base to sustain Big Government. But on the other hand, the cost of their benefits is growing so large that it is undermining the very foundations of Big Government. How? By the double whammy of a falling birthrate and a declining death rate. For various reasons, fewer people are being born. And old people are living longer. This has flipped the pyramid in the great Ponzi scheme upside down. The growth rate of those collecting benefits is greater than the growth rate of those paying into the scheme.

An Increasing Life Expectancy is Bankrupting Social Security

FDR signed Social Security into law in 1935. The average life expectancy in 1930 was approximately 59 years. The retirement age in the Social Security Act of 1935? 65. That’s right, the average American would have been dead for 6 years before qualifying for Social Security retirement benefits. That’s a 6 year cost cushion. But not everyone died at 59, though. So a lot of people lived to receive those benefits. But one thing the actuaries were sure about then, this Ponzi scheme was going to be a big winner. For Big Government.

The average life expectancy increased to approximately 70 years in 1960. In other words, people were living approximately 11 years longer. That 6 year cost cushion just became a 5 year cost exposure. That’s a swing of 11 years. The actuaries in 1930 never saw this coming.

Social Security had its first crisis in 1975. To save the program, they increased payroll taxes and decreased benefits. Another crisis came in 1983. Now they started taxing some Social Security benefits. Even taxed federal employees (who previously didn’t pay these payroll taxes). And they would increase the retirement age for later retirees.

By 2000, the average life expectancy increased to approximately 77 years. That’s another 7 years. That’s a swing of 18 years from 1930. A huge actuarial miscalculation. The population was getting far older then the FDR administration ever guessed. And, to make matters worse, the birthrate was declining.

A Declining Birthrate is Bankrupting Social Security

The birthrate (per thousand of population) had been declining from 1910 (30.1) to 1920 (27.1) to 1930 (21.3). That’s about a 10% decline from 1910 to 1920. And a 20% decline from 1920 to 1930. Perhaps that’s the reason for the 6-year cost cushion they gave themselves. They saw fewer babies being born. Which meant fewer taxpayers would be paying for later retirees.

The birthrate fell to 19.4 in 1940. Though it was falling, it wasn’t falling as much. Only 9% from 1930 to 1940. Then came the baby boom generation. The birthrate in 1950 shot up to 24.1, a 24% increase from 1940. More babies meant more taxpayers. This birthrate held pretty steady in 1960. No doubt the LBJ administration felt optimistic.

LBJ exploded federal spending. He added Medicare and Medicaid. Made Social Security more generous. And why not? Things were looking up. Birthrate-wise.

But it was short-lived. The birthrate went from 23.7 in 1960 to 18.4 in 1970. That’s a 22% decline. The birthrate was 15.9 in 1980. That was a 14% decline from 1970. Or a 33% decline from 1960. Birth control and abortion were taking their toll on the U.S. birthrate. Fewer babies meant fewer future taxpayers. And fewer taxpayers could pay for less government, not more. The LBJ administration was wrong to feel optimistic.

The Selfish Baby Boomers Invert the Ponzi Scheme Pyramid

The baby boom generation has really thrown a wrench in the works. The government used their spike in the birth rate as a baseline for future government spending. But they screwed the government in the end. Instead of being good little taxpayers by making even more little taxpayers, they stopped having babies. They didn’t stop having sex. They just stopped having babies. It was the era of free love. And ‘free love’ had no room for babies.

And it’s these baby boomers that are working themselves up to the top of the pyramid. But being the selfish ingrates that they are, they’ve left no one to follow behind them to keep the Ponzi scheme going. And to make matters worse, they’ll be living longer in retirement than anyone ever guessed.

It’s a perfect storm of sorts. A declining death rate. An even more declining birthrate. And a huge chunk of the population about to go on the public dole. But it gets even worse. The boomers will be living longer in retirement because of huge outlays in Medicare spending to keep them alive. In other words, the government is spending a fortune to make their financial problems worse.

Amnesty, Catholics and Dead Retirees May Save Social Security

They’re trying to fix things on the taxpayer side. The Big Government legislators are desperate to give illegal aliens amnesty and citizenship. To them it’s simple math. More people equal more taxpayers. And these taxpayers will be Catholic. Catholics don’t use birth control and abortion like Americans currently do. Their birthrate is less likely to decline. (Approximately 1 in 5 of young children in the United States is Hispanic already. They project that to increase to 1 in 4 within a few decades.)

On the benefit side, they’ve already raised the retirement age to 67. And there’s talk about raising it to 69. If more people die before they’re eligible to collect retirement, that’s a lot of benefits the government doesn’t have to pay. They’re also talking about cutting the Medicare budget. The less they spend, the more may die. And dead people don’t consume Medicare benefits.

There’s no getting around the fact that old people are a huge drain on government. Though they worked hard to get these people dependent on government, their continued living is becoming more of a burden than a benefit. An increasing lifespan is anathema to Big Government. Old retirees take more than they give. Young workers, on the other hand, give more than they take. The government needs more young workers. And fewer old retirees.

(Social Security + Medicare) Spending = 2 X Defense Spending

To be efficient government has to minimize costs in relation to revenue (i.e., taxes). And there’s an 800 pound gorilla in the room. Old people. Nothing can impact the budget more. Even war. Social Security and Medicare combined make up approximately 40% of the federal budget. Defense spending is approximately 20%. A blind man can see the gorilla. Government needs these old people to hurry up and die.

And now add Obamacare to the equation. Which will cover more people than Social Security. The costs will be astronomical. Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare will easily eclipse 60% of the total federal budget. That kind of spending cannot be sustained. Greece, France and Great Britain have proven this in the 21st century.

That’s some serious cost to contain. And how do you contain that kind of cost? You do what the Left says the private health insurers do. Deny coverage to sick people. And they will. They’ll have to. And with the power of life and death literally in their hands (i.e., death panels), they’ll be able to. They’ll be able to maximize the number of young workers (by treating them). Minimize the number of old retirees (by not treating them). As well as minimize the number of undesirables who take more than they give (by not treating them). Or even take more serious measures with those seriously ill or impaired (euthanasia).

Don’t think it can happen? It’s happened in other Big Government states. In fact, the Progressives even talked about the scientific benefits of eugenics and euthanasia here in the United States in the early 20th century. To deal with undesirables. So, yes, it could happen here. Because it almost once did.